The crime was unintentional and had no witnesses. The guilty could flee the scene, dispose of the body, keep the cash, and simply walk away. But actions have consequences. And even the most perfectly executed “walkaway” is followed by a shadow. . . . On a snowy Christmas morning in 1979, Gunther ...
I like me a good down and dirty crime novel as much as I like just about any other read. No one is going to mistake Scott Phillips’ The Ice Harvest for great literature any time soon, and that’s a shame because books this enjoyable often get overlooked by the literati. This crime noir moves fast ...
In early September, I finished Hop Alley by Scott Phillips. Hop Alley is a sequel of sorts to Phillips’ 2004 novel, Cottonwood. Cottonwood takes place in the town of Cottonwood Kansas, a small town in southeastern Kansas, in 1872. My interest in that novel was due to the fact that it told the sto...
It was one thing to know where I worked, but he’d found out awfully fast that I’d moved. It read:You know whose going to be real interseted in that money of yours is the fBi old J Egdar will get a big laugh out of watching you hung out to dry Also enclosed was a copy print of a more flattering ...
I NEEDED A STORY FOR A MOVIE, and I needed to find a French screenwriter for Marie-Laure’s meeting. And I needed one who wouldn’t be asking for money up front, which precluded my doing it through an agent. It occurred to me that I might be able to adapt a book myself, lifting the dialogue verbati...
The first listing I went to was the one that used to read E.L. Dayton, and the address. I spent a lot of time staring at that listing when I was sixteen, running my fingers over the ink and imagining the lust-filled missives I'd send to Kelli now that I knew where she lived. Finally acting on tho...
It matched the one she’d made for Garth; I had not received one. “Christmas,” Ninna said. “Ought to spend it at home. Might be a good idea to go to church, even.” “No Lutheran church around here,” I said. “Where would you go?” She shrugged. “Ought to go to church on Christmas.” Despite my best ef...